


Flux

by misseffect



Series: The Normandy Detective Agency [1]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: 1940s, 2 4 6 8 why is garrus vakarian great, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Noir, Dancing, Detective Noir, F/M, Idiots in Love, Light Angst, Paragade (Mass Effect), Post-War, Pre-Relationship, Shakarian - Freeform, Slow Burn, no plan only write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 11:15:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28812537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misseffect/pseuds/misseffect
Summary: The Citadel DLC tango scene but make it angst.Part of the Normandy Detective Agency series - a collection  of Noir / Human AU one-shots.
Relationships: Female Shepard & Garrus Vakarian, Female Shepard/Garrus Vakarian
Series: The Normandy Detective Agency [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2112396
Comments: 10
Kudos: 18





	Flux

**Author's Note:**

> Ever since I replayed LA Noire last year, a Noir AU has been living rent free in my head and it just WILL NOT fucking leave.
> 
> The Normandy Detective Agency will be a non-chronological collection of one-shots, updated sporadically, and mostly made up as I go along.
> 
> Suggested listening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U3yGsEFV_E

"Marvin - it's Jane." Shepard twirls her pen and tucks the receiver into her shoulder to reach for a pad. "Mhm... maybe - depends what you've got for me. I'm looking for a guy. Yeah - tall, skinny feller with a scarred-up face and... no, no trouble, he's a friend. Could you - " she grins " - no, truly this time. Do me a favour though - don't tell him I'm asking after him. Alright, thanks."

A receiver goes down on a desk several miles away. Shepard scribbles idly in the corner of her pad.

"What are you gonna do if he's not there, call every club in the city?" Ashley is sorting freshly-developed photographs on the desk opposite, jotting dates and locations along the bottom edge. Shepard covers the receiver with her palm.

"Chloé's at Flux tonight. He'll be there."

Distant bass notes and a warbling voice trickle through the chatter on the end of the line. Ashley shoots a furtive look at Shepard, like she's been doing all afternoon.

"You really can't tell me where you were this morning?"

"Loose ends. It was nothing."

Ashley glances at the door to Anderson's office, which is closed, and lowers her voice. "It wasn't anything to do with - "

"It's something of his," Shepard says, quickly. Ashley opens her mouth. "It was a loose end, Ash. Small-time stuff." Shepard clamps the receiver under her chin again and goes back to scribbling. "But we've got shit to do tomorrow and he's an ass when he's hungover."

"Right."

Ashley doesn't buy it because she's not an idiot; because Garrus is AWOL and Shepard's been distracted all day, and now she's calling bars at 7pm looking for him. But Ashley knows better than to keep asking.

The telephone line crunches and pops in Shepard's ear.

"Marvin," she says. "Yeah... greyish hair, kind of surly looking... Great, I'll come down. No - honestly - he's nothing to worry about. You're a peach. Thanks."

Shepard dumps the receiver and grabs her coat. "Let Anderson know I'm done for the day?"

"Sure."

"And we're meeting Mrs. Jenkins at - what - ten-thirty?"

"At the Blue Bottle Café between Park and Sixth."

The telephone trills. They both look at it, then at each other. Shepard waggles her coat, pointedly, "I think it's for you, Miss Williams."

Ashley huffs and reaches for the telephone, "Normandy Detective Agency." She shoos Shepard with her other hand. "You've just missed her, ma'am, can I take a message?"

Marvin must've had half an eye on the door. He flags Shepard down before she's half way down the stairs at the entrance. She has to squeeze up to the far end of the bar to meet him; it's busy for a Thursday night.

"Miss Jane," he slings a dishcloth over his shoulder. "Your feller's stage left, four or five rows back from the floor."

Shepard cranes her head in the direction Marvin points, but the frosted table lamps are too dim to make out more than silhouettes. The band is between sets so the floor is mostly empty and the tables are heaving. THE FLUX CLUB, embossed in purple neon, blazes above the stage.

"Thanks Marv." She fishes a dollar out of her coat pocket. "Can I get a rum highball?"

"Yes, ma'am. You want it on the table?"

"Please. Keep the change."

She finds Garrus without too much trouble. Lucky for her - and unfortunately for him - he's a distinctive man. He's drinking something short and iced and absently shredding a matchbook onto the table. She's six feet away before he sees her.

"How'd you know I was here?" he says, as she throws her coat over the back of the chair opposite.

"Good evening to you too." He sips his drink, mulishly. Shepard sits; tries again. "I heard your best gal made an appearance tonight and I know you wouldn't miss that for the world."

Chloé Michaux - the hottest little thing on LA's jazz circuit. As long as she was on stage, Garrus couldn't be made to do anything useful if his life depended on it. They met her backstage at Dark Star Lounge once. It took three hours for the back of his neck to return to a normal colour and Shepard has teased him relentlessly about it ever since.

"Very funny," he says, dryly, but he does seem marginally less sullen. "Drink?"

"I've got one coming." She ferrets in her purse for cigarettes with one hand and reaches for his discarded matches with the other. Thirty feet away, the band are meandering back up onto the stage. "Mind if I - ?"

"Sure."

She doesn't offer him one. He doesn't smoke and she's never yet figured out why.

"D'you wanna dance?" Garrus asks, unexpectedly.

They've spent an hour talking about everything but this morning, and Shepard's had nothing but two strong drinks since lunch. Garrus has had - well - more than that, certainly, if he's asking her for a dance. The tables around them are a carousel of friends and couples; alternately rowdy and intimate.

Shepard huffs a laugh. "You know I'm a hopeless dancer, Garrus, I'll step on your feet."

"They'll live." He knocks back the rest of his whiskey. "I'll keep drinking if I don't do something else. C'mon - " he stands and offers his hand, " - one song. Humor me."

Shepard could refuse anybody - anybody - but Garrus; especially when his eyes are sad and honest, and there's a matchbook in shreds on the table. She still owes him a ring and two weeks of lemon muffins - not that a dance makes much of a dent in those. And he really is an ass when he's hungover.

His hand is cold in patches from the ice in his drink. The band strikes up something mournful and steady, like early morning rain, as she follows his back through the soft, blue cigar haze. Shepard doesn't always feel at home in a crowd, but now the anonymity of it puts her at ease. They could be any other couple - her right hand in his, his arm around her waist, her left hand just below his collar - mirrored fifty times over in the dim, glittering lights.

Shepard lets him lead, following him through a gentle sway. They've done this before - twice, when they were much less sober. She concentrates on the bass notes in the balls of her feet and the hi-hat prickling her scalp. Her temple bumps his jaw and they both mumble an apology. A gentle, crooning piano wanders in and out, and for a minute they don't say anything at all. Like they're any other couple; like they didn't kill a man today.

"You're not so bad at this after all, you know, Shepard."

Shepard harrumphs. "Just don't ask me to do the tango."

Her nose is half an inch from his lapel; a trace of laundry detergent and yesterday's aftershave. He rests his chin lightly on the top of her head and breathes out, like it's the first time he's breathed all day. If this was anybody but Garrus - brilliant, fumbling Garrus, who goes to pieces the minute he meets a woman he actually likes - Shepard might fool herself into... well, never mind.

"I thought it would help - " he says, suddenly, like it's a conversation they've already been having, " - but I'm not sure it has."

Shepard doesn't need him to elaborate. He was furious and distant when they reached the shipyard at San Pedro Bay before sunrise, and no different when they left it twenty minutes later with one less bullet between them.

"Was it the right thing to do?"

"You value my opinion too highly, my friend, I've been telling you that for years."

She can't - won't - tell him what he wants to hear; that's not what they do for each other. God knows why it matters to him anyway. A woman somewhere to their right giggles, shrill over the meandering saxophone, and her partner whisks her away from the floor in a mess of hands and skirts.

"There aren't a lot of black and white choices in the world, Garrus. It's about degrees of damage, there isn't good behind one door and bad behind another."

"You think what I did was damaging?" he says, and there's and edge to it.

"No," Shepard says, slowly, "I would've wanted him dead too, if it were me, and I don't think the world is much worse off for it."

"But?"

They're on dangerous ground and he's too damn tall for her to get a read on his face.

"Maybe it was _fair,_ ' she says, "but I'm not sure it was right. Whatever that means." Whatever he wants that to mean.

He's silent for a beat or two. She's suddenly profoundly, intensely aware of his hand on her back.

"An eye for an eye," he says.

"Something like that, yeah."

"You didn't try to stop me."

They're at least two songs deep now, maybe three - Shepard isn't really listening. There's a loose thread poking out from the back of his tie.

"They were your people," she says, "It wasn't my call.

In truth, short of turning herself into a human shield, Shepard doesn't think she could've stopped him if she'd tried.

"When we found Saleon you put a gun in my hand."

"That was a long time ago. And it was different." They were different too. Garrus; fresh out of the LAPD and desperate for purpose. Shepard; judge, jury and executioner. Uncompromising and invulnerable. "Turning Saleon in was too much of a risk. If he'd gotten away without jail time, he would've gone on hurting people."

"Maybe Sidonis would too." Garrus says, though without much real conviction. Shepard says nothing.

Like so many of them, Sidonis became what he was half a world away, in guts and shrapnel, barely old enough to drink when he left home. Shepard understands wanting somebody - anybody - to pay for what they all endured, tooth for tooth, but in the end it's too awful, too unknowable, too god-damned big to figure out where the buck stops. You'll chew yourself up trying.

So Garrus made a strawman out of Sidonis and now they're here, folded into one another, and there's a body face-down in a shipyard warehouse.

"I think he knew it was you, somehow," she says. "I think he knew when I called him. But he came anyway."

She remembers Sidonis's tired, even voice on the telephone. How he'd agreed to a meeting - with a stranger, before dawn, in a deserted part of town - without question.

Long before she met Garrus, Shepard got ahold of the Archangel dossier - or whatever scraps of it her clearance allowed at the time. Archangel's reputation preceded them across Europe until their abrupt disappearance in '44, she'd known that much already. Officially they were an elite sniper unit but some of their confirmed kills - especially the later ones - had not made for pretty reading.

_[REDACTED]: Gunshot wounds (all limbs and primary organs). 80% third-degree burns._

_[REDACTED]: Chemical overdose, [REDACTED] acid (direct, prolonged contact with eyes)._

She trusts Garrus, completely and unflinchingly, but last week - when he handed her a grainy photograph of Sidonis in a Long Beach bar, his face blazing - all she could think of was the dossier. She agreed to help him partly because he asked - because of engagement rings and lemon muffins - and partly because she knows just how much pain he has the capacity to inflict.

She remembers Sidonis and his sunken face in the dusty orange sunrise. He didn't flinch when Garrus yelled his name from the gangway in the rafters; he saw the scope over the railing and he didn't move a hair. There are worse ways to go than a bullet between the eyes.

"Maybe it was a relief for him, in the end."

"I hope not," Garrus says, quietly.


End file.
